Vale Chris Clegg C11(1913 - 2007)

I am saddened to report that Chris
Clegg, Australian Centurion
Number
11, died on 13th December, 2007.Chris had been living in
retirement in Santa Monica in California and, at 94 years of age, was
our oldest living Australian Centurion. Chris's family had moved him
into a convalescent home about 3 months ago as he'd become very frail
but, even with the more intensive care, his time had obviously come
and he passed away peacefully one week ago.

Chris Clegg in England for his second
British Centurion finish in
1979

Chris was born in England on 4th May
1913 and developed his love
for
racewalking during his early working days when he was a member of the
Leicester Walking Club. He joined Leicester in 1941 and went on to
help the club to many team victories. In June 1947 he became
Leicester's first centurion in the London to Brighton and back,
passing 100 miles in 21:39:42. (He returned to the Shoefayre 100
miler in England in 1992 and was the special guest starter.)

At the end of the second world war,
Chris found that it was hard to
find work in
Britain and so migrated to Canada where he worked for a period of
years. At one stage, he travelled to the USA for a racewalk and
decided to stay. He lived there for the rest of his life. But it is
fair to say that, even though he lived in America/Canada for over 50
years, he never lost his English accent and he remained a 'Brit' in
manner and attitude.

He worked for many years as a postal
worker and eventually retired
to California where
he lived in Santa Monica. In retirement, he no longer racewalked but
kept fit with long strolls in the hills outside Santa Monica.

It was many years after his first
Centurion walk that he decided to
try again. The
American Centurions had recently formed and their first few walks saw
few finishers. Chris joined the field for the 1971 scheduling and
became American Centurion Number 7 with a time of 22:46:14. He was 54
years of age.

This seemed to rekindle his love affair
with long distance walking.
In 1975 he
travelled to Australia where he recorded 22:34:14 to become
Australian Centurion Number 11. Then in 1977, he travelled to Holland
to become Continental Centurion Number 53 with a time of 23:18:55.
With this performance he became the first walker in the world to
capture all 4 Centurion badges – England, America, Australia and
Continental.

Not content with that, he then
travelled to England in 1979 and
finished a second
British Centurion walk, his time on this occasion being 23:07:51. He
was aged 62 at that time.

He was an insatiable traveller and in
retirement he made many trips
to various locations
around the world. His regular postcards were always from a different
overseas location. In 1996 he decided to make a trip to Australia to
coincide with our Melbourne based Centurion event and it was great to
see Chris once more after such a long absence. He was at that stage
79 years of age but showed with his enthusiastic approach that age is
no barrier to someone so full of life. He stayed with me in Melbourne
and saw more in his few days here than most of us see in a year!.
Chris and I caught up with Mike Porter during his lunchbreak at the
Melbourne Ports Historical Area and Mike was able to show him around
the Port area in which he worked.

After the race, Chris ventured north to
Sydney, then to Brisbane where he caught up
with various old friends, then to Canberra and hence back to
Melbourne. This was his third trip for the year, having travelled to
Turkey and Greece in May and then to England and Scotland in July.

He returned to Australia a year later
and turned up unannounced to watch our 1997
Centurion race in Brisbane. With the weather oppressively hot, he
took over the sponging table and spent the day handing out water to
the walkers. He was 84 years old at the time.

Chris was for many years our most
decorated Centurion, having
completed the 100 mile
distance on 5 occasions as follows